Filed under: soapbox
What the hell kind of parent puts a t-shirt on a 9 year old girl that says “My boyfriend is out of town”? Do you know how hard it was for me to keep from saying, Wow, that’s about nine kinds of inappropriate?
Filed under: offspring
Filed under: offspring
In one of my less-than-stellar mothering moments, I fell asleep on my bed this afternoon around 4 pm. (I’ll just lie down for a few minutes and not close my eyes… ok I”ll close my eyes but not sleep… ok I’ll zzzzzzz.) When I woke up it was 7:00. WHOOPS. Clearly there was some quality programming on Teletoon or I would have been woken up long before by a short person demanding to be fed. I quickly tallied my available physical and mental energy, and decided we would go out for supper.
Five minutes later we were at Boston Pizza, which I could justify as being slightly healthier than McDonalds, but with almost the same speed of food delivery. Sport worked on the colouring & activity sheet for a bit, and then asked for help with one part. The question was, “How many words can you spell with the letters from KITCHEN?” He did pretty well once he realized he could use the letters out of order. Near the end, I pointed out the “CK” combo for the ends of words, and wrote down “TICK” and then he got “NICK”. And then he stared at the letters for a few minutes and announced, “If there was a D, we could spell DICK.”
Um… yes, I suppose we could. Fighting back the giggles, I asked him if that was a word, and he said yes. I asked what it meant, and he wasn’t sure. So I told him that it’s a nickname for Richard, and left it at that.
Filed under: life in general
If you have a six year old who is obsessed with superheroes, it is not uncommon to download photos from your camera and discover shots like this:
It’s not a bad picture, actually. There they are, posed on a backlit ledge, all ready to spring into action. Batman, in particular, looks quite menacing. I’m sure the cats were intimidated as all get-out.
Filed under: offspring
When I picked Sport up at school today, he immediately said, “Mom, look what I made!!” and presented me with the following object:
Um… interesting. I went with, “Wow. Ah, what is it?”
“It’s a hologram!” he announced proudly.
Ok, I must have misheard that. “Sorry, it’s a what?”
“A hologram!”
I have no idea what he is talking about. It’s, like, half a carrot with some stuff sticking out, and a bird, and some… grass? I tried asking more questions to get a better idea what exactly the thing is supposed to be, and he did point out that there is a hole on one side where the bird could go in.
Light bulb moment! Ok, he’s misunderstood somewhere along the way… and it’s a HOLLOW (something) not a hologram. But… a hollow-what?
It’s driving me crazy. I’m about to email his teacher and say, hey, you know that craft project the kids made? (Yes, I saw other kids toting similar constructions.) With the paper plate and the orange cup and the green stuff and the bird? Please tell me what on earth it is, because I am losing sleep. And if she says it’s a hologram, I’m asking for a refund on some of those school fees.
Filed under: offspring
Sport counted the money in his “spending” piggy bank yesterday and discovered he had enough to buy a little transformer. Of course, being the immediate-gratification type, he wanted to go to the store NOW.
“I’m making supper. We are NOT going to the store right now.”
“How bout after supper?”
“No. Besides, I think the toy store closes at 6 on Saturday.”
(long pause)
“I bet WALMART would be open!”
Filed under: life in general
I have a number of family and friends on various continents who are complaining about the sad lack of photos of Sport posted here. I’ve decided to occasionally post photos but to password protect them. In order to make it easy for the aforementioned family, the password is my mother’s maiden name. If you are a friend who can’t recall that fascinating trivia fact, email me at the link to the left (“Contact Me”). Regular readers should feel free to email me and ask, but I will say up front that if I don’t know you, I’m probably not going to give you the password. No offense, but I’ve been burned on this before. See below for the first photo post!
Filed under: offspring
Filed under: life in general
I rarely listen to the radio in the car anymore. Sure, on long car trips we break out the iPod, but for day-to-day driving, the only soundtrack is the rapid-fire stream of questions coming from the back seat. And the ten or fifteen minute window between dropping Sport at school and arriving at my parking lot always seems to be filled with stupid call-in games or traffic reports, no matter which station I choose.
But yesterday I had to go to work early, so I was in the car at a slightly different time. And I flipped on the radio, and one after the other, three songs played that I found highly nostalgic. Here they are, in order of appearance:
“Never Surrender” by Corey Hart: It’s 1985, and all the stirrup-pant, slouch-sock wearin’ girls are loving Corey. My brother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I requested “Boy In The Box”. Now, my brother was a long-haired, AC/DC T-shirt wearin’ heavy-metal rocker at this point in time. (Two years later, he cut his hair and started wearing pink t-shirts with sport jackets – you know, the Miami Vice look. “Aw, he’s gone preppy.” a friend was heard to complain.) But despite his loud disdain for all things Corey Hart, he swallowed his rocker sensibilities and in a true show of brotherly love bought me the album. And lived to regret it, since I spent waaay too much time loudly singing along to “Everything in My Heart”, “Boy in the Box”, and of course, “Never Surrender.” And I’m a TERRIBLE singer. But what the hell, because after all, no one can take away your right, to fight and to never surrender, to NEV – ER SURRRRRENDER!!!
“Beautiful Day” by U2: I will never in my life be able to hear this song without picturing a big green overland truck, Namibian deserts, and seven people who had been complete strangers only a week before. Six days into a month-long overland safari through Southern Africa, this was voted our “trip song” – meaning we played it every morning when we set off in the truck. It is no exaggeration to say that this trip changed my life – because of the people I met, the things I saw, and the happiness I found along the way. It was Beautiful Day after Beautiful Day, and my life would never be the same again.
“Red, Red Wine” by UB40: It’s 1990, and I”m at the bar with my three best friends from high school. I want to say it was summer, but then the schoolmarm would have been there illegally, and I’m sure we NEVER did anything like that. Maybe it was fall… but anyway, there we were, one drinking rye & diet, two drinking some sort of fruit-based concoction, and me – the designated driver. Which is probably why I was the one going, “Oh, come on, REALLY?” when this song came on, and K shrieked and insisted that we all get on the dance floor. She loved that song. Funny, I hadn’t thought about her for a long time, and I haven’t seen or heard from her in at least fifteen years. But then I hear “Red, Red Wine” and suddenly there she is, etched in my memory – holding a strawberry margarita and grooving to UB40.
